


Harvest

by stateofintegrity



Category: Rush (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 01:04:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5688634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geddy goes to a harvest party and almost makes a terrible mistake. (POV alternates)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harvest

Alex

        As my car leans into turns I’ve never taken before, on a road that’s serpent-coiled and serpent-shining under my headlights, I wonder again what he was thinking, coming out here to this desolate place. It’s telling that I don’t wonder why _I’m_ here. I’ve never been able to tell him no. Plus, I’m cat-curious about what the hell he’s doing out this godforsaken country road in the middle of the night. He sounded rattled when he called me, rattled enough to call me “Ali,” a childhood nickname that hasn’t crossed his lips in years. I warmed to hear it, but felt kind of sad that it had been so long. I guess I can’t fault him for growing up, but did he have to grow so far away from me? Before, he would have called me if he was starting out on some adventure. I’m worried that he took this one alone.

        The night brushes against the side of my car like a pair of great, dark cats, and I shiver in spite of the heater. Errant handfuls of leaves skitter across the road, some death-diving under the tires. I wish I had a way to call him. I could use his voice like a silver thread to guide me to him. I smile to myself, half-rueful. That image has more power than it should. Neil’s always said I make more of him than there is. At the thought of him, I grow warm and decide to do something I don’t usually do. Left hand on the wheel, I fumble in the armrest and come up with a battered and unlabeled cassette.

        The tape slides home with a click and I hear laughter, his and mine, before the guitar starts in. We recorded this song in a garage when we were boys, and his voice sounds as clear as morning. As the tape spools spin and the minutes pass, his voice deepens and he becomes more sure of himself, but he always sounds beautiful to me. As I near the drive, I pocket the tape. It would embarrass him, and tell him too much, and I’m not one to rock the boat.

 

Geddy

        I hear the _hsshhsh_ sound of the tires on asphalt before I see the car. Then the headlights glow on the wet leaves and gravel crunches under the tires as he comes to a stop. He surprises me by turning off the car and getting out to hurriedly look me over.

        “What is it?” I ask him.

        “Just making sure everything’s okay. You didn’t sound okay.”

        Apparently satisfied, Lerxst ushers me to the car and opens the door for me. He’s always been overprotective of me, and I’m used to his chivalry. Inside, he drapes a maroon cover over my lap, the one that usually lives in his backseat. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

        He smiles, and it’s like sunshine. “Anytime, Dirk.”

        I relax, so grateful that I haven’t betrayed this.

 

 

Lerxst

        I want to ask him about this mysterious trip out here on a harvest moon night, but the way he was standing at the end of the driveway… I barely have breath yet, let alone words. There was a grayed, wooden fencepost behind him and he was beautiful before it, beautiful in a way that our drummer would be able to write about. It should go in a song – “beautiful like a fencepost against autumn is beautiful.” I want to tell him, just like I’ve wanted to tell him so many times before, but I don’t think he’d thank me for a disruption like that. My hands grow white on the wheel and my fingers tremble.

        He’s the one to break the spell he’s started, when I notice that there are wet leaves in his soft, sparrow-wing hair. I gently work them free, loving the feel of his soft tresses against my fingers. If I was braver, I’d run my hands through his hair and hope he’d tremble for me. Instead, I tug the maroon blanket up on his shoulders a little higher. “You sure you’re okay?”

        He just laughs. He’s our worrier and doesn’t like to share the role. Still, I’ll feel better when he’s home and dry and safe in his own bed. I just wish I could crawl in beside him.

 

Dirk

        Maybe life has a way of reminding us of our miracles. Maybe that’s what this moment with Lerxst is, the safety and warmth of being in his car at his side, against all the darkness and uncertainty of the night. I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been – twice over, really. Once for never having been able to fight my way free of loving him more than I ought to, and once for tonight. For a moment – just one – I actually believed I could replace him. I thought that I could shift all that I feel for him onto someone else… thought that I could get lost in a body as beautiful as his, counterfeit a romance I’ll never be allowed to have. That’s why I was at that party.

        I knew that there would be guests of a certain orientation, there. I’ve never wanted anyone but Alex, woman or man, but… what? I broke, I guess. Got sick of need-shivering alone, hand stretched out to dial his number. He’s my _best friend_. And you don’t call your best friend – almost your _only_ friend – in the middle of the night to confess to the kind of feelings I’ve had since we were teenagers together in Willowdale. If I could just need him less…

        He glances over at me, trying to riddle out the night behind us, the events preceding my strange phone call. “Ali,” I called him, so afraid of losing myself, losing the best part of me in him. I made him the golden anchor against my darker impulses, made him my white knight out of the darkness, my rescuer. What he saved me from was a night of pretending to make love to him. That I needed the real, true him to save me from that… I just don’t know what that says about me.

 

 

Lerxst

        I glance over him as the car rolls out of the hills, as we head back toward our own little patch of suburbia. He looks terribly frightened, almost to _spooked_ , like someone is scuffing their shoes over his grave. I want to reach over, to make him tell me what’s under his skin. Instead, I just drive him to his doorstep and watch as he makes his way up the sidewalk. I want to run after him, protect him from whatever darkness is dogging his steps.

        When he reaches the door, he stops, like something’s wrong. I see him hesitate, then come back to me and get back in the car. He looks at me across the darkness, his face too white. “Ali,” he calls me for the second time tonight, “Could I… could I stay with you tonight? I don’t want to be here by myself.”

        He starts to go on, to say that he knows he’s already put me out by having me come get him, but I stop him cold when I hold him gently to me. “Let’s go home.”

 

Dirk

        I feel like I owe him something, some explanation for running from my own doorstep, but in the five minutes it takes him to drive from his house to mine he doesn’t ask. And once we’re inside he treats me like a guest, fitting a cup of rum cider into my hand and making me comfortable in the den under a mound of covers. I just wish I could sleep upstairs next to him… especially tonight.

        I’m wracking my brain for some kind of excuse he wouldn’t immediately recognize as a lie, but then he touches his fingers to my wrist. It’s a light touch and warm. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says gently. “But I know something scared you tonight and I’d make you feel safe if I could.”

        I smile, trying to tell him that his concern is unnecessary. “I was… I was at some stupid party. A harvest party. I almost did something out of character. I guess I just lost myself for a minute. I didn’t do anything, but it scared me that I let myself get that close.”

        “Drugs?” he guesses. He struggled with them himself for a time.

        “No. It’s not important. I’m fine now. Thanks for… for rescuing me.”

        His huge hands just ruffle my hair, negating what he takes for hero worship. Then he just tells me to get some sleep and begins to ascend the stairs.

 

Lerxst

 

        I don’t want to leave him lying down there in the dark with some secret gnawing at him. I’m sure it’s nothing. Dirk’s always been too hard on himself, and he’s too good-hearted to have really done anything, despite his talk of “losing himself.” But I saw the fear in his face. Some shadow moved across his heart tonight and I want to be the one to keep it from him. Paused halfway up the staircase, I hear a distinct and unfamiliar sound, like the soft, mewling cry of a wounded bird. Everything in me shifts to answer that sound, to move the universe around if it would alleviate that pain, and I’m surprised that I don’t run down the stairs and back to his side. Instead I’m frozen, listening to my best friend cry as an autumn rain begins to drum on the roof. The right thing to do is probably to leave him alone, to not embarrass him by going to him when he’s got tears in his eyes.

        Fuck the right thing.

        He’s my best friend and he needs me whether he knows it or not.

 

Dirk

        I’m crying too hard to even feel his touch at first, but when he leans in to nuzzle against my hair, I have to feel that, and all the warmth in him breaks something inside of me, making me cry harder. Gently working his hands under me, he lifts me until I’m mostly sitting, makes me face him. “C’mon. Come to bed with me.”

        Stupidly I think that if I’d have known that all it would take were tears to get him to take me to bed, I would have practiced working up a few at need. But I know he doesn’t mean it the way I want and that just makes the clear streams flow down my cheeks faster. Using his thumbs to steady my chin, he wipes my tears away; they glisten on his fingertips. “Come on, Dirk. Let me take care of you.”

        Helpless in the face of his beauty and the way he always protects me, I let him put his arm around my shoulder and take me upstairs.

 

Lerxst

        Sometimes I wish that I could channel our third band member. I’ve never seen Geddy this upset and I don’t know what to say to make him stop trembling. As we climb the stairs, the rain is so loud that it seems to be all around us, a cold blanket of dark water shutting us out from everything. In the bedroom I turn the fireplace up. It’s early to be using it and I’ll have to lose my shirt for sweating or sleep on top of the covers, but at least Ged will be warm. He stands uncertain, tears somehow making him more beautiful still, and I gesture for him to get into bed. Walking over, I tuck the covers up around him. “Shhh,” I tell him, smoothing his hair back and wondering at how soft it is, how cool. “Dirk, whatever it is, even if you can’t forgive yourself, I forgive you, ok? It’s okay.”

        He searches my face as if he wants to be sure I’m telling the truth. I shake my head, remembering what he said. _A harvest party… Something with a name like that shouldn’t leave you looking so broken, so… withered._ I lean closer wanting to say more and my lips are parted to speak when his mouth meets mine.

 

Dirk

        I freeze in the aftermath of my too-great trespass. Outside, the rain pours down like the sky is shattering, but it’s nothing compared to the latent percussive capabilities of my heart. It drums its way into my throat and I think it will actually break into pieces, save me from what I’ve just done. But then he kisses me back. I don’t understand it at first – his fingers alighting on my back, curling there to brace me. His mouth is a perfect contrast to this perfect autumn-dark and autumn-cold night and the warmth and pressure awakens things in me that have been dormant for so long that I swore they had died. He doesn’t stop with one kiss. He’s taking me deeper, pushing me back on the bed, and I can taste him as he laps at my lips, trying to get me to open my mouth. What kind of backwards Halloween miracle is this?! When his perfect body grazes my rising need, I make a sound like something between a sob and a cry.

       

 

Lerxst

        I would have followed the road he’s set us on to its natural conclusion if it wasn’t for the sound he makes. I open my eyes to search his features and see how large and black his eyes have become; he’s scared to death. “It’s okay,” I promise him, my hungry fingers reaching out to trace that perfect mouth. “I’ll take care of you.”

        I understand it all, now. It makes perfect sense. I mean, how long has Dirk been alone? And when he got too lonely, he went to that stupid party. He must have been embarrassed about how he felt. That’s why he didn’t ask me. It’s like swallowing glass to admit the next part, but I can’t blame anyone but myself. He must have been… attracted… to someone, must have thought about going home with them. That’s how he “almost lost” himself. Dirk could never really be with someone he didn’t care about, but he must have been hurting pretty bad to think about it.

        And now he’s here. We’ve been best friends since we were twelve years old, so he has to know that he’s safe with me. And I know I can make him feel good. And if he wants to forget about it later, I can live with that, too. At least I’ll have the memory. I barely hear him when his soft, sweet, silver voice asks, “You… you’d do that? With _me_?”

        I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry – but there’s something breaking inside of my throat, inside of my heart. I’m hurting for the years of pain he’s endured to be able to ask something like that and I nod with tears shimmering just behind my eyes.

 

Dirk

        Alex is perfect. It shouldn’t surprise me that he’d be perfect in this. But can I take his endless generosity in place of love? Can I let him make this mistake? He probably thinks it won’t matter, close as we are, but doesn’t he realize what it means for me? What it _makes_ me?

No.

If he thinks anything, he thinks I’m touch-starved, maybe even that I’ve been lonely because I like guys. He couldn’t be more wrong.

He must see me start to back up, readying myself to fly away from his arms, his bed. He stills me by grasping my wrist. It’s an old gesture between us. His pulse comes down to meet mine and his fingers enfold me like flower petals, forcing my fingers to close on his wrist. I swallow. Maybe I _am_ starved. It means so much, just to touch his skin. His wrist… someone should sculpt it, his hand, his fingers. I want this so much!

“Dirk,” he says, lips closing on my shoulder. “Oh, Dirk…”

Fuck. He sounds like he means it, like this could be for real. And if he’s willing to take on such a mask for me, to pretend much more deeply than we ever have onstage… if he can do so much, I feel like the least I can do is give, let him have whatever part of me is worth having (even if there’s no part that he could ever want like that). I let him hear my surrender in a sigh and I feel him smile into my neck, glad, as always to be able to win me over, to get his way.

 

Lerxst

        The rain is still hammering down, intent on nailing the dark cloak of the autumn night into the soaked ground. Even with the fire and the covers and the warmth of his skin, I feel that dead season cat-clawing at the window, wanting to nuzzle its autumn-cold nose against us both. We’ve lost the pumpkin gold of the harvest moon and its absence makes me feel like every good thing is threatened. Maybe it’s just being here with him like this… I’m afraid that if I take him in my arms, all I’ll wake up with is a handful of withered hopes. But he needs this – needs me – and maybe if I’m good enough, he’ll want to stay with me.

        I murmur stupid things into the silk of his hair, feel it brushing against my face, catching on my lips. He smells like stepping into leaves – like earth and cinnamon and violets pushing their pale faces out of all the dark that the old leaves have gone down into… or maybe he just smells like him, and that’s still enough to make me crazy. That smell – his smell – it’s going to be in the sheets, in me.

        He makes a sharp sound when I work my fingers under his shirt and I flash him a smile that won’t stop wobbling around my mouth. “You think I’d tickle you _now_?”

        “Sorry. Sorry. I’m just…” He makes a motion meant to stand for complete disorientation and I nuzzle at his exposed ribs with my mouth.

        “Has it really been that long?”

        “Longer,” he whispers.

        I tilt my head to look up at him, to hold his eyes without breaking contact. His skin is so soft. “Let me make up for it, Dirk. I’ll make you forget all those other, lonely nights.”

 

Dirk

        If I could have written a script for this, I wouldn’t have had the sense to make him say that – to sound like that. But now that he has and does… “ _…yesss…”_

He doesn’t need more than that. I’ve just given him the single thrumming bass note of my need and now he can put his golden fingers to work improvising all night. I expect him to go right for the aching bulge in my jeans; he’s a Lerxst and doesn’t do anything by halves. But instead he balances his perfect body over mine, tangles our fingers, and tilts my head up to meet his. Never mind sex – I can’t remember the last time I was kissed. It surprises me, the gentle way he presses his lips to mine, the way he’s able to pull me in without any of the hesitation/fear/embarrassment cocktail that’s racing through my bloodstream. He tastes like the mellow moonlight from tonight mixed with malt powder… he tastes like he sounds. To think, I almost did this with someone else, someone strange and unfamiliar and new… someone who wasn’t him.

        I’m scared; fear buzzes in the back of my mind. But I can’t take notice of it, not with his tongue flitting in and back out of my mouth, teasing. And now his fingers have settled on my thigh. They make fluttering motions, just barely grazing me, and I’m mortified to feel myself jump at such slight contact.

        “You’re okay,” he promises. “I’ve got you.”

 

Lerxst

        They’re my stage words to him, a magic phrase that promises forgiveness for the little slip ups that he can’t forgive himself, that promises that I’ll be his safety net if he wants to risk singing the song in a different way, trying a new bass jam. I tell him he’s beautiful as I work off his clothes. The cold has gotten into them as if his time outside, waiting for me, marked him somehow. I rub up and down his body in an effort to warm him. But, when his teeth chatter, I know it’s not from the cold. He’s looking up at me, laying on his back, hair fanned out around his face, his shoulders. I’m on my knees, shirtless, hard.

        “Why would you…” he begins, but I don’t let it get any farther than that. Sinking over him, I undo my zipper and let him feel every inch. He might think that I agreed to this because he’s my best friend, but I don’t think he can mistake this. He’s the first one over the border, grasping me as I hold him close. He fumbles a little with the slippery foreskin but it’s all bliss to me and I take his touch as permission.

        He bucks as soon as my fingers close on him and I’m awed that I’m getting to do this. I’m going to be allowed to get him there! Reaching down, I gently brush his fingers aside. “For you,” I tell my beautiful friend. “This time is just for you.”

        He whimpers in answer, mews, his silver voice wound up with need. We’ve spent most of our lives in recording studies but I’ve never heard him like this and for just a minute I wish I could record it, listen to it as I lay alone in this bed, let the mere sound of him make me spill over. It wouldn’t even take a touch.

        A rosy flush moves up his throat, paints his pale chest and trembling stomach. I want to push inside of him, to open him for me, but he’s shaking hard now; this won’t last long enough for me to take him – even if he does want me to. I stop stroking him and start to pump, making his eyes fly open. If he did go up there tonight wanting a guy, I can’t really blame him. I know how to do him because I’ve done the same thing to myself. And even though I’ve treated him like he’s delicate, I don’t do it here. I know what he needs and I know what he can take. I squeeze hard and bunch my fingers under the head; the soft skin there flares above my hand as he starts to scream.

 

Dirk

        “Alex!”

        “Alex!”

        “God, _Ali_!”

        I don’t hear the rest – what I ask him to do to me, what I beg for – but I keep saying his name. This might be all that I have – let him hear the truth of it. People believe deathbed confessions; why should secrets howled out in the midst of orgasm be less true?

        God, he’s a master. No wonder the man is a guitar god. I’m _there_ – rocking, bucking, shaking, teetering, but he keeps changing the pressure of his hand, letting up just enough to keep me from going off all of the way and then clamping down again, so tight.

        Shivering on the brink, I scream out a last truth. “I love you!”

 

        Days pass.

        I’m dead. (An orgasm that intense – it’s kind of like dying).

        I’m reborn.

        And when I look up, his eyes are as wide as all the world and he’s staring through me, out at the autumn night. He’s soft there, between his legs and I curse myself. If I had just let it be a favor, a moment when I broke and he helped me, we might have gotten out of this okay. Now I’ve lost him for good.

 

Lerxst

        I don’t realize that I’m caressing his fingers until I feel him shiver under the touch, and I can’t censor the nonsense that I’m mumbling at all. “I understand. You don’t mean it. It was just… the sex I understand.” I don’t, but I think that’s what you’re supposed to say when the love of your life doesn’t love you back and accidentally breaks your heart with a voice so silvery gorgeous that you want to die with it in your ears. I swallow some foreign object lodged in my throat and refuse to sob. I said I could handle this – enjoy it, even – treasure it in the face of all the other nights I’d never have him, but away from his body, I just feel cold and lost in the dark.

        He looks up at me through a veil of tears and I want to stab my own damn eyes out. I took him up here to make him stop crying and now I’ve messed it all up. He takes a moment to steady himself and I feel myself coming apart in the face of his shimmering skin, firelight throwing shadows across a body that I made light up with my touch. How can something so beautiful be lost forever? Ged, I just want to keep you safe and warm and chase all the darkness away from your life. And God knows I don’t have the right to ask…

        “I won’t mean it if you don’t want me to,” he says and a hand comes up to hide his face and comes away sparkling with tears he doesn’t want me to see. “But I did. I’m sorry, Ali, but I did.” He sniffles, moves past the broken parts of himself with impossible grace. I just shake and shake. “And it wasn’t just the sex.” He grows timid and soft as some thing newly created, but he doesn’t free himself from my hand. “Thank you for that, though.”

        I’ve always thought his voice was a miracle – impossible to imitate or replicate, or even easily capture on tape. I always want to be his engineer, to bring him to song with my eyes. But he’s never sounded like this. He sounds… warm – full, too. Like a current. Did I do that? Did what we just had together, however quick and messy it was, did that make him sound so calm and content? Is such a thing even possible?

        “Don’t thank me,” I finally mumble, overwhelmed with my emotions – and with him.

        He laughs at that and I wonder that we can sit naked like this. How is all this even possible? “I will for … well, for always. Even if you don’t want me to say it to you. I won’t forget this. I meant it, Ali. I never would have told you if it wasn’t for tonight, but the whole reason I went to that party was to try to get over you.” His smile is lopsided and shivery. “It didn’t work.”

 

        My brain is all static and fireworks and the pulsing lights from one of our stage shows. I feel like I’m going to die – and I’m going to be one pissed off autumn spook if I go before I get to touch him again!

        I start slow, groping for words in this new reality we’ve stumbled into. “Geddy… Ged, on the way to get you I was listening to you.”

 

Dirk

 

        _Listening to you…_ It’s the way a musician says he’s in love with you. I know it. I feel it in my body, in my teeth, in my bones – the way I’ve felt the music we made together so many times resonate wildly in my breastbone, lifting me up, making me something greater and better than I could ever hope to be if I wasn’t up onstage beside him. I know it – know what we’ve become this time.

        I still don’t believe it.

        I want evidence. I want dates and times and memories and questions answered and parameters laid out… and I want to make love to him again and again and again.

        But he’s just smiling – all golden Lerxstish autumn night miracle, all redemption, all wonder after you thought there was nothing left to have – _all_. Everything. All mine.

        “So?”

        He doesn’t say the rest of the words, but his hand tightens on mine and if I say yes now then I’m saying yes to forever and to always, as sure as if he was down on one knee. Heart brimming, I only have it in me to nod.

        He sighs, laughs, tackles me, and then we’re in a world of covers and firelight that he’s swearing not to abandon until after winter has passed. Given the wonderland of his body to explore, I think I’d say yes even to that!

 

End!

       


End file.
